Canada resurgent

[calimac]

When a political party is in deep trouble in the popularity stakes as an election looms, switching their leader to a new and shiny model rarely works. If you look at the list of Canadian prime ministers, you'll see a couple from the 1980s and 90s who served derisorily short terms. That was the reason.

It worked this time, though. And, weirdly, the person responsible for that was Donald Trump. Old PM Justin Trudeau from the Liberal Party had already announced his impending retirement when DT pulled his "be a bully to Canada" routine, and it got everybody's back up. You'd think a guy who wrote The Art of the Deal would know better than to antagonize people he's negotiating with, but then Trump didn't really write his own book, did he? Anyway, Trudeau denounced all of this in his quiet Canadian way; his successor Mark Carney denounced it even further in his even quieter Canadian way, and just about everybody in the country agreed with them. (As do I, though I'm not Canadian.)

Even Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the opposition, chimed in, rather awkwardly both because "me too" isn't a fervent campaigning posture and because Poilievre's personal style is rather Trumpian. He's also even more alarmingly right-wing than Stephen Harper, the noxious previous Conservative PM. Canada dodged a bullet by not electing him. Voters decided that Carney, a sober banker who's led major financial institutions out of crises before, was a better bet to stand up to Trump.

But this didn't mostly happen because of Conservatives changing their minds. It seems to have been mostly supporters of the third major party, the New Democrats - a social democratic group rather similar to what Bernie Sanders and AOC want to lead here in the States - who decided they couldn't risk letting Poilievre into office and turned over en masse to the Liberals. They weren't willing to do this before, but they were with Trudeau out and Trump looming. As a result, the NDP - which 14 years ago actually outpolled the Liberals at their pre-Trudeau nadir - won the fewest seats ever in its history. But that's what happens to third parties in a first-past-the-post system.

Comments

[topaz_eyes]

(Here from my Network...)

It seems to have been mostly supporters of the third major party, the New Democrats - a social democratic group rather similar to what Bernie Sanders and AOC want to lead here in the States - who decided they couldn't risk letting Poilievre into office and turned over en masse to the Liberals.

The NDP was actually the 4th place party before the election (25 seats). The 3rd place party was the Bloc Quebecois (33 seats). However, the NDP had enough seats on its own to keep previous Liberal minority governments afloat since 2019.

On the surface it seems like the NDP turned over en masse to the Liberals, but this isn't quite correct. The Conservatives gained more seats this election (+24) than the Liberals did (+17). Several major NDP ridings in Ontario actually went Conservative, not Liberal. However, the Liberals picked up a significant number of seats from the Bloc Quebecois (it lost 11 of 33 seats). What you said is true with respect to the Bloc Quebecois: Quebec voters felt the Liberals were the best chance to defeat Trump.

Re the NDP, attempts at strategic voting split the vote on the left in many former NDP ridings, and led to the Conservatives coming up the middle to win.

Also, the popular vote between the Liberals and Conservatives was depressingly too close for comfort (43.7% Liberal, 41.3% Conservative).

[calimac]

I called the NDP "the third major party" because I don't consider the Bloc a major party. It makes no attempt to run nationwide; it's purely a local ginger group.

[topaz_eyes]

You're not wrong, but in our first-past-the-post system, local parties like the Bloc get to have outsize influence on Canadian politics. (The Bloc was Canada's Official Opposition from 1993-1997.) Today, the Bloc is still the 3rd place party while the NDP has lost official party status.

This time around the Liberals are lucky that enough NDP MPs were elected to tip the scale for voting on bills, without needing to rely on the Bloc.

[calimac]

Number of seats in parliament is a significant thing, in the specific sphere of parliamentary tactics. But it's not the only way to measure a party's importance. The NDP has fewer seats than the Bloc because it's less concentrated, but it got almost exactly the same number of votes. In the previous election it still had fewer seats but over twice as many votes. Popular support is important.